Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is used by organizations to keep track of interactions with their constituents. Portland State University (PSU) uses Talisma as its enterprise CRM software for prospective and current students.
At PSU, Talisma is used for the following:
- Managing mass-mailing campaigns to prospective and current students. These can range from a data-driven sequence of follow-up emails to stay in touch with prospective students after they submit an inquiry form to regularly scheduled mailings like the weekly Virtual Viking email.
- Managing and tracking service desk interaction "tickets." The system monitors incoming email accounts for new messages, assigns them to staff, aids in referrals to other offices, and tracks the status of requests. Interactions via phone, text, and in-person can also be recorded. Data from these interactions can be used to build reports so that departments can measure their performance or identify coverage needs.
- Improving student success. Academic advisors across undergraduate programs use a specialized advising "portal" to keep track of advising interactions with students. This integrated system helps bring together academic and non-academic interactions to help build a complete picture of what the biggest threats are to student success so that advisors can make sure students have access to the resources they need.
Choosing Talisma
Departments interested in Taslima a CRM solution should ask the following questions to determine if it meets their needs:
- Who are your constituents?
Currently, Talisma works best for managing campaigns related to current and prospective students. If your constituents include donors, alumni, faculty, staff, vendors, or any other group related to the University, Talisma will be difficult to adapt to your needs.
- Do you need integrated data from Banner?
Talisma is updated nightly with data from Banner and draws in many of the most commonly used fields; this information can be viewed, used to search, or used in email campaigns.
- Is your office already communicating with constituents using a departmental/service email account?
If you already have a service email account set up and it's meeting your department's current needs, then you don't need to transition to Talisma. However, if you believe your email campaign needs are going to increase in the future, having an existing service email account will simplify the transition to Talisma. If you don't have a service account, talk with your departmental IT support for help setting one up.
- Who manages your email campaigns?
Because Talisma is a complicated service with many options, it's best to have at least one person take ownership of setting up and executing campaigns. A poorly-configured campaign could send out emails to the wrong people or otherwise damage your reputation and the University's, so it's important to have a trained individual in charge.
If you've thought through these questions and are still interested in Talisma CRM as a solution for your department, please contact the Enterprise Applications team at oit-crm@pdx.edu to set up a meeting to talk through your department's goals.
Further Resources
Requests for access to Talisma can be submitted by emailing oit-crm@pdx.edu.